Saws and other apparatuses designed for cutting or performing other working operations on a workpiece typically require a workpiece-supporting fence in order to support and locate the workpiece in a proper fixed position for performing the working operation. Examples of such equipment include cross-cut compound miter saws which are adapted for allowing the user to selectively move the saw blade into any of a number of positions or modes for square cutting, miter cutting, bevel cutting, or compound miter cutting where a combination miter and bevel are cut. In addition, some operations, such as dado cutting or shaping operations, for example, require the use of saw blades or other cutting or working devices of different shapes or sizes to be substituted for one another in order to perform the desired operation on the workpiece, whether the workpiece is composed of wood, plastic, metal other materials.
In order to accommodate these widely varied working operations, the workpiece-supporting fence is frequently required to be at least partially adjustable in order to selectively vary the gap or space between the saw blade or cutter and the workpiece-supporting fence, thus selectively providing clearance for the saw blade, cutter, or other device performing the working operation on the workpiece. If such adjustability were not available, a relatively large permanent gap would have to be provided between the fixed fence and the saw blade or cutter in order to accommodate the widely varying range of movement, position, or size of the saw blade, cutter, or other working device.
In order to address the above-discussed problems associated with providing clearance for the cutter and support for the workpiece with the incorporation of a movable fence having an adjustable clearance gap, a variety of fence-adjusting arrangements have previously been provided. However, many of such prior fence-adjusting arrangements have suffered various disadvantages, including difficulty in maintaining proper alignment between the stationary fence and the movable fence in wide-gap positions, inconvenience in performing fence adjustment operations, the possibility of inadvertently misplacing a removable fence, lack of adequate support for relatively tall or thick workpieces, or other similar disadvantages. Thus, the need has arisen for an adjustable fence assembly for compound miter saws, or other power equipment requiring fence adjustability, which overcomes these disadvantages, as well as providing improved ease of operation, economy in manufacturing, and other advantages that will become readily apparent to those skilled in the art from the discussion below.